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By Root 2046 0

chairs,” little tables with kerosene lamps and photographs, glass cabinets with crystalware and porcelain, and butterflies mounted in velvet-lined cases. The walls were decorated with watercolors showing country scenes. The baron asked how his guest was feeling, and the two of them exchanged the usual polite remarks, a game that the baron was more skilled at than the army officer. The windows, flung open to the twilight, afforded a view of the stone columns at the entrance, a well, and on either side of the esplanade opposite, lined with tamarinds and royal palms, what had once been the slave quarter and was now that of the peons who worked on the hacienda. Sebastiana and a maidservant in a checkered apron busied themselves setting out teapots, cups, sweet biscuits, and cakes. As the baroness recounted to the doctor, the journalist, and Olímpio de Castro how difficult it had been down through the years to transport all the materials and furnishings of this house to Calumbi, the baron showed Moreira César an herbarium, remarking that as a young man he had dreamed of science and of spending his life in laboratories and dissecting rooms. But man proposes and God disposes; in the end he had devoted his life to agriculture, diplomacy, and politics, things which never interested him when he was growing up. And what about the colonel? Had he always wanted to be in the military? Yes, an army career had been his ambition ever since he had reached the age of reason, and perhaps even before, back in the little town in the state of São Paulo where he was born: Pindamonhangaba. The reporter had left the other group and was now standing next to them, brazenly listening in on their conversation. “It came as a surprise to me to see this young man arriving with you.” The baron smiled, pointing to the nearsighted journalist. “Has he told you that he once worked for me? At the time he admired Victor Hugo and wanted to be a dramatist. He had a very low opinion of journalism in those days.”

“I still do,” the high-pitched, unpleasant voice said.

“That’s an outright lie!” the baron exclaimed. “The truth is that he has a vocation for gossip, treachery, calumny, the cunning attack. He was my protégé, and when he went over to my adversary’s paper, he turned into my most contemptible critic. Be on your guard, Colonel. This man is dangerous.”

The nearsighted journalist was radiant, as though he were being showered with praise.

“All intellectuals are dangerous,” Moreira César replied. “Weak, sentimental, capable of making use of the best of ideas to justify the worst mischief. The country needs them, but they must be handled like animals that can’t be trusted.”

The journalist burst into such delighted laughter that the baroness, the doctor, and the captain looked over at him. Sebastiana was serving the tea.

The baron took Moreira César by the arm and led him to a cabinet. “I have a present for you. It’s the custom here in the sertão to offer a present to a guest.” He took out a dusty bottle of cognac and with a sly wink showed him the label. “I know that you are eager to root out all European influences in Brazil, but I presume that your hatred of all things foreign does not extend to cognac.”

Once they were seated, the baroness handed the colonel a cup of tea and slipped two lumps of sugar into it.

“My rifles are French and my cannons German,” Moreira César said in such a solemn tone of voice that the others broke off their conversation. “I do not hate Europe, nor do I hate cognac. But since I do not take alcohol, it’s best not to waste such a gift on someone who is unable to appreciate it.”

“Keep it as a souvenir, then,” the baroness interjected.

“I hate the local landowners and the English merchants who kept this region in the dark ages,” the colonel went on in an icy voice. “I hate those to whom sugar meant more than the people of Brazil.”

The baroness went on serving her guests, her face not changing expression.

The master of the house, on the other hand, had stopped smiling. His voice, nonetheless, remained cordial. “Are the Yankee